At the end of most years I write a recap of Commoncog’s best essays. 2023 was different: I got married in December and took the entire month off. As a result, you’re getting this recap at the start of 2024. I want to do two things here: I’ll do a thematic retrospective, but more importantly I want to talk about what’s coming down the pipeline now that Commoncog has a new vision for its future.
How do you want this community to contribute to the case library? Do you want to solicit ideas for cases? Have us submit unsolicited ideas? Review and comment on cases you write up?
I have a couple ideas of things I have personal experience with but wanted to get a better sense of whether they’d fit with your intentions.
Well, the ideal end-state is that whenever you listen to a podcast, stumble onto a book, or read an article that demonstrates a business concept, you contribute it to the case library. But I have no idea how that would work at this stage, and I’m sure there’s going to be lots of nasty surprises with that use case that we have to solve when we finally build it.
Right now, though, I think the biggest value-add is for members to discuss cases and add their own analyses — in the comments section below each case (or blog post that embeds cases). I find that I learn a huge deal from members every time you post a take, or a “this case reminds me of …” type response. I’ve found @ajzitz’s syntheses quite useful, for instance!
We’ll slowly add functionality to allow members do more stuff. So, some low hanging fruit is allowing members to write their own syntheses of cases; to allow members to propose new concepts — both entirely new concepts that don’t yet exist in the library, as well as link concepts they’ve noticed in a case that perhaps Commoncog staff has not.
I’m sure there are use cases that I’m not thinking of right now, so I’m all ears (and will probably just add every thing someone suggests here into a massive spreadsheet of feature ideas).
(PS: on the ‘concept that I didn’t notice when writing the case’ — as an example, only after a discussion with a friend did I realise the Marvel Studios Origin case demonstrated a cornered resource moat, due to the nature of the negotiations Maisel had to do over existing IP).